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…… sanity is not my first language

suicide

I wrote the following piece a number of weeks ago when I was feeling really bad. Not mad but really scared and panic-stricken. I needed help. Not because I was feeling unwell but because I had a situation I couldn’t handle without outside help. What I got was verbal abuse and rejection. Sometimes suffering from depression and “being crazy” are not an illness. Sometimes they are a reaction to circumstances and how people you treat you. The pain of being rejected and badly treated over and over again by the same people manifests itself in the anxiety and fear and other physical symptoms specific to me that have caused and been caused by whatever depressive illness I have. People I never expected to help me stepped in and saved the day. Strangers offered help. My Twitter posse stopped me from losing all my chill. My lovely kind friend couldn’t have done more for me. I didn’t intend to publish this piece. I haven’t blogged since I went viral. It didn’t suit me. But I’m certain others suffer the same. Sometimes you think you’re depressed. They even tell you that you’re crazy. This piece should be called “It’s Not Me It’s You” because sometimes you are not mad. It’s other people.

Something really good happened to me recently. Amazingly good. I still haven’t taken it in. But as I tap this out, waiting for kick off in Paris where Ireland are about to play Sweden in #Euro2016, I’m fighting to stay alive. I am struggling to take each breath. My chest aches constantly. When I sleep I’m having rambling, anxious dreams and when I wake up from them in the early hours my heart is fluttering wildly and it feels like I’m about to die. My limbs are heavy. It is an effort to lift my arms. My fingers feel to big for this keyboard. When I walk I’m wading through a huge wall of heavy water. Sometimes it’s hot and sometimes icy cold. I cannot eat. When I do eat I can’t keep it in. My stomach is liquid. Today I spent 10 minutes locked in the bathroom vomiting up a sandwich I had forced myself to eat. I am however still alive.

Something really good happened to me. But the bad thoughts are back. They are clamped to my brain with long invisible claws that I cannot prize away. Something good happened but the people I wanted to be happy for me are not. They are silent. I fall back into the abyss of bad memories their silence creates. I am watching the ball go up and down the pitch in Paris and I feel nothing except my heart pounding too fast underneath my left breast.

Something good happened but I am having suicidal thoughts. I am not suicidal. I do not want to die. Thinking that I could ever leave my family makes me howl. My whole body wants to shut down. It’s both trying to protect me by taking away my energy to leave the house, and kill me with the physical symptoms it is imposing on me. I have been here before. I know I won’t be beaten. It is 20 years this year since I last gave in to the bad thoughts and tried to die. I refuse to do that now even though this creature on my brain is crushing me, twisting my chest.

Something good happened to me and if you meet me on the street this week, I will smile and make you laugh and complain about the rain and wonder about Brexit. You will not notice that it hurts for me to breathe. You will not notice that I want to cry. I will go home and help with homework and put on washing and watch the news and tweet. Be kind to the people you meet. There are others like me.

Something good happened but today is a bad day. Maybe tomorrow I will wake up with no pain in my chest and a lightness in my brain. Maybe tomorrow will be the day. I might as well live.

Last Week I listened to broadcaster Olivia O’Leary talk about her experience of depression at the age of 24 on RTE Radio. At about 10 minutes in, she said something that made me need to lie down. When she realised she needed help, Olivia contacted her sister who brought her to a “terrific psychiatrist” and here’s where I needed resuscitation:”he used to take me out sailing”… “and god we had great fun”. Olivia O’Leary went sailing with her psychiatrist. This sentence just about summed up my entire experience of growing up in Ireland. Aged 24 she got the best and most personal treatment available and she recovered.

Since the interview went out Olivia O’Leary has been lauded for her bravery and praised for raising awareness. You know the script. We’ve heard it a lot lately. Beautiful, successful people are queueing up to tell us all about their struggles and how if they can reach just one person then it’s been worth baring their soul. But you know how I feel after another inspirational interview, I feel worse. I feel inadequate. I feel that I’ve failed. Because guess what, I’m still unwell. I am not at the height of the glittering career I thought I had in front of me. I am surviving. I am alive. I’ve been “battling” mental illness since I was 11 years old. I thought I was an angsty hormonal teen, a misfit. I wasn’t. I was horribly intensely unwell. And 30 years later I am still not in full control of my mental health. And I have realised why. I thought I wasn’t brave enough. Not strong enough. But that’s not it. The real reason I’m still here dreading every single day that comes to me is simple. I never went sailing with my psychiatrist. I wasn’t rich enough. I wasn’t connected enough.

By the time I had done my Leaving Cert I had managed to fix myself to such a degree that I achieved all A’s and B’s in my exams and had my pick of college courses. That ship however didn’t sail either. I hadn’t the money to take up the offers and aged 17 I can only say I spiralled into a mental fugue that worsened until I was in my mid thirties. By the time I sent myself to college I couldn’t even hold a conversation with another student. My most vivid college memory is hiding in the ladies toilets with a bottle of vodka, vomiting from stress and washing it back down with the alcohol because I had to go to a meeting with my thesis supervisor. I got an A. I have an Honours Degree but no college friends. No happy stories to tell. That’s what mental illness really looks like. It sucks the life out of you and leaves you covered in your own vomit.

For thirty years I have pushed myself through depression, severe anxiety, 2 and a half suicide attempts, and an eating disorder. Hi my name is Niamh and I’m a bulimic. I did not go sailing with any psychiatrists. I saw a counsellor who told me to go for walks and avoid cheesy food. Given that I can’t drive and hate cheese that advice wasn’t exactly top drawer. I have spent 30 years working on myself. I’ve walked, I’ve cried, I’ve done yoga, I’ve cycled, I’ve taken my medication ( the drugs do work), I’ve painted, I’ve worked, I’ve written poetry, I’ve been tattooed, I’ve drank, I’ve given up drink, I’ve shaved my head, I’ve run thousands of kilometres. But I’m still sick, unwell, mentally ill. Call it whatever you want, the words don’t bother me.

So when I see people like Olivia O’Leary or Niall Breslin telling me how to get better, I get mad (no laughing at the back) and I feel compelled to listen to angry rap music until I calm down. I cried when I watched Bressie speak at the Lovin Dublin Live Show about his experiences with depression. Everything he said resonated. #JeSuisBressie and yet….. Bressie has become a much-needed advocate for mental health issues. We need reform, we need cash injected into services. We need education. There’s no arguing against that. What we also need are the opportunities for people to reach their full potential in this great country of ours. Not just the chance to make a viral video. Real chances. Education access for everyone. Jobs. Homes. Reasons to stay alive. The idea that somehow exercise and a chat will save your life is just demoralising. I could walk 500 miles and back and still be me. It’s like running away from a hump on your back. Would you tell me to go for a walk if I told you I had breast cancer. Would you tell me to join a running club or pick up that phone. No you would not. #JeNeSuisPasBressie Because quite frankly these wellness campaigns, however well-intentioned, are making it too easy for our governments and health executives to dodge their responsibilities. It’s easy to back a popular campaign fronted by good looking successful men and women. It’s a lot harder to actually bring about real change in real people’s lives. People like me, who have never gone sailing with their psychiatrist.

Recently I was called a “Catholic apologist” online. By somebody in the legal profession too so I was kind of rattled. Kind of. But it got me thinking about how I see the Church and what I believe in. And Elvis. I think about him too a lot. But that’s another days work.
I decided I was an atheist in 6th class just before I made my Confirmation. I’d read Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham, life was shit and where the fuck was God? And that was that or so I thought. Who in their right mind would believe in an all-powerful being they can’t see and will never see? Not me that’s who.
And then the Church imploded and I was right! The Church is dead. Priests are bastards. Nuns are evil. Etc and etc. As a nation, Ireland came out from under the shadow of the Catholic Church. We got divorced. We got all sorts of contraception. We got married in registry offices and hotels. We acknowledged how we treated women forced to give their babies away because they hadn’t entered Holy Matrimony. We voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality. We ARE a new people. We have Ann Summers and nobody cares anymore that you can buy crotchless knickers on the same street as Mothercare. Obviously we have more to do. Twelve women a day are leaving this great nation to access abortion abroad so #repealthe8th but again another day’s work.

So there I was, a happy atheist ( when I say happy I mean suicidally depressed but you know what I mean) and then something happened. I got married. In a registry office. My mother in law never recovered. And I had children. To baptise or not to baptise. GODDAMN YOU ALL I’M AN ATHEIST. But it wasn’t that simple. I went to a Catholic school where the nuns were lovely and loved us all. We were taught tolerance and that Jesus loves us all. We had a Joy Club and it was actually joyful. I told the priest at school that I was an atheist and we had a perfectly reasonable chat about it. He was a lovely man. Who was I to deny my children the benefit of a happy education. If they choose to embrace faith as part of their lives that’s their choice and if not and they reject it then that’s perfectly fine too. But I wanted to give them the option. So I did. So far so Irish.

But lately I’ve noticed that you can’t just be an atheist. You have to be an Atheist. Capital A. The Great Church of the UnGod. Atheism is a religion and a fundamentalist one at that. It’s become perfectly acceptable to sneer at people who have faith and pray or go to Mass. I’m still an atheist but I’m not at all happy with this creeping trend. Peak Atheism for me happened when the internet nearly blew up congratulating Stephen Fry for railing against an unjust god he doesn’t believe in on The Meaning of Life with our own Gay Byrne. Was there one dissenting voice? I certainly wasn’t brave enough to say: “You know what Fry? Fuck off you’re an ATHEIST”. Yesterday I witnessed a good, decent man who is also a priest being called a “sky pilot” on social media while he discussed an epidemic of suicide in his parish on the radio. He was angry and he was sad. 8 suicides in 3 weeks. Think about that. In one county. BUT HE’S A SKY PILOT. DON’T LISTEN TO HIM. Have we forgotten that priests are on the frontline when it comes to grief. They’re at deathbeds every day. They are at the homes of bereaved parents and wives and husbands after the most tragic events. They offer the only comfort they can, which is their faith. Have we really come to a point where we think it’s acceptable to pour scorn on every man of the cloth simply because he is one. That’s not the New Ireland is it? I’m not ready to reject what was part of my cultural upbringing. I went to Mass everyday with my Granny. I loved it. It was an important part of her day. She had friends. She was part of the Church. I’ve had friends and relations who have endured great personal tragedy and they took enormous comfort from prayer. They had to believe there was a reason, a better place. Maybe nothing changed but they felt in some small way better. I’ve been to the pit of despair more than once in my life and I’ve cried out desperate prayers to the Blessed Virgin or whoever would listen to me to help. And I felt helped. I felt better. I sang hymns on that boat back from England. I can’t say I believe in God but I won’t laugh at anyone who does. I won’t demonise good priests or the lovely nuns who teach my children. I’m Irish. I collect rocks to keep me safe. I’m a Catholic atheist. And proud to be one.